It was 1994, and the Republicans had just taken control of the House of Representatives. After the change Cato Institute co-founder Ed Crane received a call from Fannie Mae, one in which he was told of a pending donation from the public/private mortgage giant.
Crane knew the why behind the contribution: it reflected Fannie Mae’s desire to play to the other side in the new Washington. He refused the donation. Cato didn’t nor does it take contributions from governmental entities.
It’s useful to bring up what Crane did as a way of perhaps understanding the troubles the conservative Heritage Foundation finds itself in now. While Heritage has similarly never taken support from Fannie Mae, its drift from conservative principles is longstanding, and hardly began with Kevin Roberts. Cato vivifies this truth.
As Crane long said to the occasional displeasure of more than a few donors, limited government isn’t consistent with a massive, globalized U.S. military presence. Of the belief that government doesn’t gain competence when operating outside the U.S., Crane and Cato were the original non-interventionists.
This is important to think about in consideration of Heritage’s stance on the 2003 Iraq invasion. The conservative think tank wholeheartedly supported the latter, which arguably went against conservative principles that formerly were about national defense, not nation building and the spreading of the majoritarianism that the founders were hardly fans of.
The Iraq invasion violated both libertarian and conservative principles, though Cato uniquely stood against it while losing donors in the process. It’s easy to be a libertarian or conservative in times of tranquility, but it’s quite another when all around us are terrified.
Fast forward to 2008, a visitor to the Heritage website was met with commentary supportive of financial bailouts. How odd in consideration of Heritage’s long-term professed support for free markets, and the simple truth that you can’t be for free markets if you’re unwilling to accept the message from those same markets when it’s not the one you desire.
Opposite Heritage, Cato’s scholars didn’t support the 2008 bailouts. Which was the correct stance. While left, right and even many libertarians still don’t grasp it, there was nothing “financial” about the crisis in 2008. Instead, the latter was the inevitable effect of government substituting its narrow knowledge for that of the marketplace once market forces began correcting past errors in 2008.
As a conservative organization, Heritage should have once again been allied with Cato, but for the aforementioned drift rooted in an at times blithe approach to conservative principles. Except that it’s once again easy to be a conservative and lover of market signals when they’re pointing north, not so much when they’re rendering a verdict you don’t like.
Which brings us to the present. There’s a case to be made that all the outrage at Kevin Roberts (particularly inside Heritage) has a doth protest too much quality to it.
All it takes to see this is to remember that love or hate Donald Trump, he’s not a conservative. Trump has long supported currency devaluation, protectionism, and government intervention in the workings of the market system, all three very much at odds with conservatism. Despite this, Heritage very much moved into the Trump camp after the election of 2016, and hasn’t looked back.
To be clear about this, even Cato must try to be more vigilant. See 2020. Just as politicians were the opposite of shy about taking freedom, Cato sat out the lockdowns while waiting for medical evidence. Sorry, but freedom doesn’t take a back seat to mob notions, and that’s true even if those in the mob have “MD” next to their name.
So, while Roberts has most certainly taken Heritage in an odd, surely anti-conservative direction since taking over as president in 2021, the shift surely predates him. See Cato’s more rigid adherence to libertarian principles to understand the problem with Heritage’s direction. The main thing is that even though he’s fanned the anti-conservative flames, Roberts most certainly didn’t start the fire.
Originally posted to Real Clear Markets.
